


I, Renfri

by Whiskawaybelf



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Rating May Change, Unreliable Narrator, cannon compliant for the most part, geralt isn't mentioned much in the first chapter but he will be more., relationship mentioned because duh but not going down a shipping road exactly, sexual assault a greater part of the later story unfortunately, violence mentioned but not described in great detail
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:27:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22152502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whiskawaybelf/pseuds/Whiskawaybelf
Summary: The birth, life, and death of the infamous Shrike.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Renfri | Shrike
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16





	I, Renfri

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome! A couple notes before we begin: 
> 
> I generally prefer the TV!Renfri to the book!Renfri for a few (author bias) reasons. I do love the depths the book goes into though so this is a bit of a mixed beast.   
> This is technically cannon compliant for both up until this point. But who knows if Renfri is even telling the truth so the world is really our oyster.
> 
> I'm looking into this being 4 or 5 parts total, each spanning a part of her life.
> 
> Finally, send all your comments and meta and reviews at me. I love reading them and will always answer when I can!

It is here, at the end of my life that I can see the past more clearly than ever before. Perhaps it is the blood I am choking on, in the arms of a man I think I may have been able to love and one who has been the death of me. Perhaps it is that the rage flows away in death but it can never truly leave me. If I were to die without it there would be nothing left of me barring perhaps a bone or two. It has driven my steps for as long as I can remember. I would be lying if I said I lost all my anger along with my blood. It would not be possible but it is a little less. My future is darkness but my past is clear. It is so clear that it makes me want to weep. I am Renfri, the shrike of Creyden, the Princess of the Black Sun, the mutant bandit.

No. That is not right. That is not right at all. 

I was a princess of Creyden, I was a bandit, I was called Shrike, I was born during the Black Sun. I was not kind, I was not good, I was not evil, I was not a monster. 

I may have been a monster. 

It’s hard to tell now with nothing left in me but I think that once I was a child. A baby. Born in the dark. That was my first mistake. I should have held on tight to the cord between my mother and myself until I could see light again. I think it all would have been different if I had managed to wait. If she not pushed so hard so early perhaps I would still be a princess and unscathed. Perhaps I would be silly and gentle and my stepmother would have loved me. Perhaps my mother would not even have died. 

That should be a nice thought but I don’t remember much about my mother. I know she loved me, as my father did. I know they longed for me for years and that when she first felt me flutter in her belly she screamed and jumped up and down and spilled her wine everywhere. My father told me that was why my lips were so red: she had marked me with her joy. Her name was Beauty, or Grace or Pearl… something that  _ feels  _ like that, I guess. I don’t remember it now and I think it would hurt too much to try. Pain is a constant, I’ve never been without it since the day I was born but there is some pain that is beyond. A pain that changes you. My mother knew pain too. She never stopped bleeding. It took her years to die, at least two or three, and I do remember the blood. Always… from the nose, from the mouth, from a small cut that oozed like a waterfall. In deep bruises on her belly that never seemed to heal. My mother bled to death from the inside out and I knew it was because of me. She always spoke in a quiet voice like it hurt too much to be any louder. She was afraid an extra decibel might shatter me. I screamed at her before I even had words. Father picked me up and threw me around like nothing could hurt me. My nursemaids would chase me and tickle me for as long as I demanded. Why was she so fragile? Why could she not be strong for me? I think it was because I loved her so much that I hated her more than anyone else. She had made me and now she was leaving me to the world alone. No one would love me like her. That tore my heart out before I knew what a heart was. She wanted me to be kind and good and gentle. Like her. It hurt me to do so. Hurt more than the pain I was always in. I couldn’t escape it. It would kill me to try and replace her. 

_ Mama, mama, how you could have saved me _ . 

She proved me right, in the end. I could never be her. She died like I will, drowning in her blood and making no sound, but they did not find her until the next morning with her body all hard and white like ivory unseen until the horrible part was done. 

I made no sound. I let the Witcher hold me because it was enough to be seen. He had killed me and he had seen me and I did not wish to die without leaving a mark. I burned my name into his heart because I could. It’s the least I could do.

I am not my mother

I do not remember feeling joy exactly. I wonder if Mama took it with her when she died. She just sucked it right out of me and hid it in her coffin. I screamed my sadness now with words. Once a nursemaid stroked my forehead the way mother once had and I broke her hand. Her wrist actually. It is not supposed to twist in the ways I twisted it. I didn’t mean to do it, I cried out my guilt and shame at her feet but she was removed from my service and when I saw her again she backed away from me like I was a feral monster and she a helpless lamb. It hurt me that she did that but it also made a little part of me smile. In my heart I bared my teeth at her so she would have a reason to cower. Those who do the hurting do not get hurt. 

I wish that were true. My heart felt broken but it truly shattered when I met Aridea. It had never occurred to me that love could be replaced. I could not function without Mother… how could father go on? He had held me for one moment, one moment as we cried at her beautiful body in her coffin. Then he let me go and did not touch me again. He adored me because I was what he had wanted so desperately and because I was her, but I was not her and he did not know how to care for all the tangle of things that were me. All the sadness and confusion and anger at her loss, at all she was not and all that she was. He asked my ladies in waiting to sooth me, he bought me dolls and silks and ponies and puppies, anything a child could have wanted. He commanded children to befriend me. None of them compared to that moment in his arms when he wept with me. I was to face this alone. I thought it was his pain was too great to share, as mine was but it was not so. I was to learn that there is a sort of love that cannot hold. It was his but it belonged to so many. He presented me with Aridea who was already showing their first child. 

_ What is that? _

I screamed and I saw blackness. I was a child but not stupid. My mother had been dead for barely a year and I knew how children were made, I had watched enough maids rutting with stablehands, had seen enough courtly ladies with their suitors’ hands up their skirts. There is little that escapes a child’s attentions and I had plenty to spare. I screamed for hours, pummelling my little fists on the ground and kicking so violently that none could tame me and none dared try for fear their roughness would lose them their heads. Aridea first tried to calm me with her soft cool hands to my red breathless face and her hands protectively on her belly, I ripped a chunk from the meat of her thumb with my sharp little baby teeth and spit it at her. She was so horrified she almost fainted but it was then I saw that she had at least twice the strength of my father. She held back the bile I saw her spit up later, took a step back, holding her bleeding hand to her chest. It painted her blue dress and turned it to a garish purple. She locked her eyes on mine and gave me a small curt nod.

I think, even now, that we will meet in death and destroy each other properly. She might have once been willing to try and love me but we are beyond that now. She knew it was not my father’s love for his dead wife that would be his biggest opponent but me, his child. She was smart and calculated and even good, maybe. Once upon a time. Certainly I do not think she was evil at that point… but then neither was I. if she had tried harder… if I had been been allowed to adjust. If I had not been born when the sun had gone dark… if, if, if…

The truth is, if I had known then what I know now I would have bite out her jugular instead, I should have skinned her with only my incisors and left her there to bleed out. All that I have lost forever belongs to her, my happiest dreams are of her. 

Screaming. Drenched in her own blood. 

I do not blame her entirely, and that may be a surprise. If she was not yet evil, and I was not yet evil then surely it was Stregobor who made us so. Him, with his mind so small and his power so large. His words alone had the strength to destroy and he flung them out like yesterday’s scrapes. He was a fool and I dream of him too. Him I would take a part of. First his tongue so he could not do his magic nor dribble out any more words. Then I would remove pieces of him. One for every month of torment I had suffered. I would burn each wound so he could not bleed out and then I would do it again the next day. This I have dreamed of and so much more. Stregobor. Is there any monster in this story that could match him? He was an old man who got off on the power he could wield. He found a story to his liking, that of the Curse of the Black Sun and he used it for years to torture and capture and torment and kill and he called it  _ good _ , he called it  _ right _ . How then, could it be wrong to punish him? He cursed me. He said it himself, he tested me with curses and when they hurt me and made my temper short he called me a mutant. His curses were the mutation. His hate which he had already packed into his bottles like so many potions. He was ready to find me guilty with only a trial that placed him as judge and jury and executioner.

It is true I did take an eye from a servant. It was soft and easy. He had helped himself into my chambers and watched me change in hiding. When I left he tried to force himself on my lady. He was lucky I only took one part of him and sent him on his way. I crushed the eye into the ground and my lady sobbed into my little child’s arms. No one tells that part of the story. They do not tell how she was bruised all over, how she had his blood all over because she scratched and bit the way I did. No one called her unnatural. Only me. 

The animals? I do not hurt animals. They are only their nature. It was a test just like any other. A puppy was the runt of the litter. His mother would not feed him. His brothers and sisters would not play. They would only bite. A stableboy told me to let the younger children play with him and put him up against a rooster in a fight. Roosters are vicious. Most of that bird family are. They will cannibalize each other if given the chance. They will peck a little puppy to death. I told the stablehand not to do it. I stood up at my fullest height and commanded he stop this. He nodded and muttered  _ freak _ under his breath where he thought I would not find it. He did it anyway. I found the children laughing at the poor cursed puppy and the poor rooster who was made of tiny bones and sores and so little flesh and I did kill them both to put them out of their misery, I did not hurt them. I saved them. I chased the children away and I broke the stableboy’s neck. He lived but he could not walk after that so he might as well have been dead. I had given an order and he had disobeyed. 

Here is a secret you may not know. Royalty can do whatever they like. They really can and do. The trick is to hide it and blame others. The trick is to have excuses and servants and mages to protect you. I did not have those. My father refused to punish me when he found out. He said it was a child’s anger and a thing I would grow out of. He said he had been an angry child too. This did not please Aridea, now queen and big again with her third child. Her first legitimate child. The timing is so neat and clean in a story that is none of those things. Stregabor looked at these things and planned to finish me. Father could not protect me and I am not sure he cared to try. If it was not easy, it was not for him. The things I did may have been bad, I think they were, but there is where the secret is the truth. I could have gone on and on and no one would have blinked. Kings and men rape and torture and murder and  _ do not care _ . Wizards cast curses and blame the recipient for screaming, they do not care. Queens and women are cunning and cruel and cold and they care the most and the least like a string they must find their balance on. 

The only difference between them and me is that I was born in the dark. 


End file.
